


A Wanted Man

by methylethyl



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-09
Updated: 2011-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-22 10:42:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/methylethyl/pseuds/methylethyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>FBI Agent Brian Kinney is out to stop a ruthless society of thieves cohesively known as Oppenheimer--that is, until he meets Justin Taylor, a mysterious young thief who claims to work alone, but always seems to be appearing whenever Oppenheimer does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Разыскиваемый](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1044422) by [solomia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/solomia/pseuds/solomia)



> FBI!Brian/Thief!Justin AU, inspired loosely by M. Chandler's Shadow of the Templar series. Also, I don't own QaF & Co.

  
**A Wanted Man**

 **Part 1**

Brian was running down the corridor at full speed—which, with his legs, was saying something.

"Hazelhurst!" he barked, pushing his finger so hard into the earwig that it actually hurt. " _Hazelhurst!_ "

But there was only silence. Following the muted shriek of surprise, Honeycutt had been silent for almost twenty seconds and Brian was racing, racing to get main display room. This wasn't the Oppenheimer style at all, and behind the repetitive  _get to the painting get to the painting get to the painting_ , Brian was freaking out. They'd been preparing for this for almost a week, even pulling in an Oppenheimer expert from some retirement home in Tulsa, and this was not right.

"Talk to me, Roosevelt," he yelled as he flew down the hallway.

"I—I don't know what happened," Schmidt stammered. "My fields are being jammed, something happened to the cameras! Oh my God, what if Em—Hazelhurst is dead? You know they—"

"You would have had to have seen them go in. Did you see them go in the room?"

"No! One moment, feed, next moment, nothing!"

"Fuck," Brian swore. He swung a fast right and caught sight of Honeycutt sprawled on the ground. For a heart-stopping second, he thought his worst fears confirmed, but then he saw Honeycutt's chest rising. "I've got Hazelhurst. He's just knocked out. I'm heading into the main gallery."

"I've got backup coming soon, just ten minutes out."

Brian ignored him, pulled out his gun, and stood with his back against the door to the gallery. He paused, heart pounding, and took three seconds to center himself.

Oppenheimer worked in teams of three. He knew all of their faces, all of their names, and he knew that they were unafraid to kill. God knew why they'd left Honeycutt alive.

"Brando, do not go in there without backup," Schmidt ordered, in what passed for an authoritative voice. "I know what you're thinking—"

"Roosevelt, we don't have ten minutes," Brian hissed. "It only takes them five to grab the thing, and then they're going to come back  _out_."

"But—"

"Element of surprise," Brian said, and then he took in another deep breath, cocked the gun, and pushed the door back.

He swung around quickly, centering the gun on the first moving thing he saw, every muscle in his—

Brian stopped mid-spin, gun locked on to the figure dangling from the ceiling.

Blond. Young.

Definitely not one of the faces he'd memorized for tonight.

And most importantly, the kid was alone.

"Freeze!" he yelled, although it was hardly necessary. His entrance had made the bond pause in his work anyway.

The blond slowly looked up, bright blue eyes glinting in the low lighting. He was dangling from a rope that had somehow been affixed to the ceiling, stretched in a kind sideways split with several wraps of rope around his left ankle, and from the looks of it, he'd been in the process of clipping the wires that the painting hung from.

But where were the other two?

Was it possible that this man—boy—wasn't with Oppenheimer?

"Don't. Move," Brian ordered, training the gun on him.

Slowly, the blond raised his hands into the air, separate and still.

It registered in the back of his head that Schmidt's yammering had been cut off, rather abruptly. His earwig had gone dead. Fuck.

"Where are the other two?" Brian demanded, focusing on the situation at hand.

The blond frowned. "What?"

"You work in groups of three, I'm not stupid," Brian snapped.

The blond squinted at him curiously. "Are you talking about Oppenheimer? 'Cause, you know, I don't work with them. I'm terrible at working in groups—trust issues like you wouldn't believe, and I'm kind of tragically anti-social. Anyway, Oppenheimer likes to strike during events and make up big, elaborate backstories and shit, and the gala ended, like, thirty minutes ago. I am so not from Oppenheimer."

Brian blinked at the sheer amount of words.

He was used to people nervously rambling when they had a gun shoved in their face, but this blond kid was just casually prattling away.

"On the count of three," Brian said slowly, "I want you to get down from the rope."

"That's gonna take a few maneuvers," the blond warned. He was still locked in his horizontal split, parallel to the rope. "Aerials are really designed for going up ropes, not going down them. I jammed all the bones in my foot once, when I went the wrong way in a foot lock. Painful as hell."

"Do you always talk this much?" Brian asked the blond, annoyed.

The blond flashed him a startling smile. "Only when I meet a really cute guy."

"Just get the fuck down here, already."

The blond nodded amicably, and stretched his torso vertically, slowly, hands reaching for the rope. "Out of curiosity, what—"

"Don't," Brian interrupted through gritted teeth, flexing his fingers on the handle of the gun, "talk."

It looked like the blond grinned a little, but it was hard to tell in the lighting. He gripped the rope with both hands and then his biceps flexed, and then he shook his lower foot out of the rope and brought his body parallel to the ground. Then with a fluid, full-body swing like a cobra, the blond hoisted himself a few feet up the rope.

Brian watched with narrowed eyes.

The blond got himself all the way up, rotated his foot and shook off the rest of the rope. Now free, he began lowering himself to the ground.

Brian approached the blond slowly, gun never wavering. "And on your knees, nice and slow…"

The blond obliged as soon as his feet hit the ground, sinking to his knees but keeping his head up, watching Brian carefully. He was wearing some kind of black bodysuit that shone in the light.

"Arms above your head," Brian instructed.

Slowly, the blond's arms came up over his head, hands pointing straight in the air, and then his wrists came together—

There was a hissing noise and Brian stumbled back as his brain seized, blackness rushing over him. He felt himself falling, nose burning, and in the distance there was the sound of someone shimmying up a rope.

He was unconscious a second later.

 

When he awoke twenty minutes later, both the blond and the painting were gone.

" _Fuck! Fucking motherfucker piece of fucking little fucking fuck fucker—"_

 _  
_

"Schmidt!" Brian bellowed, stomping into the office. "There had better be some motherfucking—"

At the conference table, Honeycutt hissed, clutching at his head.

"Oh, go the fuck home," Brian snapped, though at a more reasonable volume. "They told you last night not to come in today. Schmidt, I want to know the sources on that Oppenheimer tip, I want to know who the fuck I talked to last night, and I want to know why he got away."

Schmidt started rambling, something about magnets and nerve gas and how he'd have a catalog with photos of all known Oppenheimer men ready for Brian to flip through within the hour.

Brian prayed for coffee and an end to headaches everywhere.

 

Lights flashed. Brian was descending from the catwalk, both hands on the rail as the world tipped back and forth, and there was a pleasant thickness to his tongue. Mikey was around here somewhere. Mikey would take him home when it was time for Brian to go home—he always did.

The music was shrill tonight, more so than it usually was. Brian liked heavier, darker songs that were made for fucking and not dancing, because he really, really could not fucking dance. But he could fuck. Oh, how he could fuck. And fuck his fucking job and the fucking world. Fuck everything. That's what he was here to do tonight:  _fuck_   _everything_.

But it was on the bottom stair that Brian caught sight of him.

"You!"

The word burst from his mouth sloppily, unheard over the music, but his brain had screeched to a tottering, toppling halt at the flash of blond hair he'd caught.

"Fucker," Brian muttered, pushing his way into the crowd. Things were really uneven now, with bodies being thrown into him every which way, but he knew he had to get to that blond. He had to arrest him, because he was a thief. "Thief. Two fucking days, you thief, but I've… I've got…"

He stumbled, grabbing onto a shoulder for support, and then yanked on the blond's arm. "You!"

The blond whirled and for a moment, he looked panicked.

Brian grinned. "Gotcha. Gotcha-gotcha-gotcha, you little shit. Shit. You… Shit… Little shit…"

The blond lifted an eyebrow. "Do mine eyes deceive me, or is the good FBI agent actually high off his ass right now?"

"Your fault," Brian declared. "You're under arrest. For being a thieving little shit. And fucking up the coffee budget for the rest of the month."

"Cool," said the blond happily. "Are you going to handcuff me?"

Brian's hands went to his hip to get his handcuffs, but they weren't there. He frowned, looking down, but then someone bumped into him and he lost his balance.

"Whoa! Okay—okay, there we go." The blond steadied him, arms around his waist.

Brian automatically wrapped his arms around the blond, moving his hips to the beat of the music. His nose fell into the blond's hair and he nuzzled, inhaling. "Mm, you're kind hot for the thief, you know. Great ass. Too bad you're going to jail."

He felt hot breaths of air on his neck as the blond laughed, and it went straight to Brian's groin. But this wasn't right. This was the thief. He couldn't fuck criminals, especially not this one, because this one was under arrest. Why hadn't he brought his handcuffs?

"Do you have a twin?" Brian asked, pulling back to see the blond's face. "Because if your twin was the thief and… you weren't, and you weren't your twin, I could fuck you."

"No, that was me," the blond confirmed, grinning slightly.

"Okay," Brian sighed, disappointed.

But now he had to arrest him.

"What's your name?" he asked. "I need to know your name so I can read you your rights, and then Mikey will take us to headquarters, and you'll be looooooocked up!"

"You can call me Justin. Who's Mikey?"

"Mikey's the sober one," Brian explained. He took the blond's wrist and began leading him through the crowd. "He's the one who drives, 'cause I get way too fucked up to drive, like tonight. Good thing he's here. He'll make sure you don't get away."

He dragged Justin off of the dance floor and over to the bar, where Mikey was leaning and looking stupid and sulky.

"Mikey, I got him!" Brian announced. He tried to shove Justin forward, but his arms didn't quite work and he ended up facing the dance floor instead of Mikey. How had that happened? Where had Mikey gone?

"…really fucked up…"

Brian spun around and saw Justin talking to Mikey.

"No, no, no!" he said, grabbing Justin by the wrist. Boy, he wished he had his handcuffs. "No talking. Mikey, he's the thief. You have to hold him, because I forgot my handcuffs and I'm really… I'm really fucking high right now."

"Brian, what are you talking about?" Mikey asked. "Is this some new kinky role play thing you're doing? Because I'm not going to—"

Mikey was an idiot. Clearly, Brian had to show him what was going on.

He grabbed Justin's wrists and pushed him against the counter, Justin's back flush against his chest. "Justin, you're under arrest for theft and fucking—fucking… the coffee. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney—"

"Brian!" Mikey cried, and Brian found himself being pulled back.

"It's okay," Justin laughed, turning around. "You should probably get him home though, if he's going around trying to arrest random people."

Mikey nodded. "Yeah, that's probably a good idea."

"No," Brian said obstinately. "No, Mikey, he needs handcuffs. He's a thief."

"Brian, he's just some random guy," Mikey snapped. "Now would you cut it out?"

"It's him! He admitted it, he said it, and I have to—I need handcuffs. Why didn't I bring my handcuffs?"

"I'm sorry," Mikey said to Justin. "I don't know what's gotten into him."

"Oh, it's fine. Trust me, if he weren't so trashed, I'd gladly help him find his handcuffs."

Brian's eyes narrowed. "You probably stole them, didn't you? You're a fucking thief. You fucking thief! Where are they?"

"Okay," Mikey said with a nervous little laugh. "Let's go. Thanks for delivering him, Justin."

"No, Mikey, no, we can't—"

"Not a problem," Justin said pleasantly. He waved. "Bye, Brian. Maybe you can have me next time, if you're less wasted, all right?"

And so despite Brian's protests, Justin melted back into the dance floor and Mikey pushed him out the door, and Brian was way, way too far gone to do anything about it.

 

The following morning, after falling into a screaming rage and cussing out Mikey over the phone, Brian got himself under control enough to call Schmidt.

"Good morning, this is Theo—"

"Justin," Brian said through clenched teeth. "His name is Justin. And he is  _dead_ , the next time I see him."

 

A week later, Brian had the kid's full name.

Justin Taylor.

Not likely to be a real name, but it was the one at the head of the file that the French had sent them. He had only two other thefts on his record, both within the last year or so, and they had only been pinned on him because of sightings during the act, not because of any physical evidence. With three thefts, though, markers of a Justin Taylor drop were starting to develop.

"But he's so young," Honeycutt said, staring at the two photographs they had of the kid, as well as the face that the sketch artists had produced based on Brian's recollections. "He can't be older than twenty! There's no way he's working alone."

Brian shook his head. "He's doing the drops alone. The evidence doesn't point to a second person, and when I saw him at the museum, he seemed completely self-sufficient. I don't know what he would have needed a second person for."

Honeycutt scowled, sitting back in his chair.

"But you're right," Brian agreed slowly. "He's way too young to be doing high-end drops like these. He must be someone's protégé. Schmidt!"

The typing in the other room stopped. "Yes, your majesty?"

"Find out if there's anyone matching Taylor's MO who's seems to have recently retired. Start with the French."

"Yes, my liege. So shall it be written, so shall it—"

"Just fucking do it already!"

He heard more muttering from the other room, but didn't bother to discern it.

 

"Oh, hell."

Brian paused, finger moving to the trigger of his gun. "Roosevelt?"

"My feeds on the room just went dead. Shit—shit, there goes the system…"

"Well, get them back," Brian snapped, tensing. The Taylor fiasco flashed in his mind, but it couldn't be. This was Oppenheimer. Their tip had been solid.

"Working on it."

"Brando, you want us to come in?" Honeycutt asked.

Brian shook his head. "No, stay where you a—"

A shot rang out from a distance.

"Fuck!" Brian swore.

"Was that a gunshot?" Gold, their rookie and extra set of hands for the night, asked. "Sounded like a gunshot."

"We're coming in," Honeycutt declared. "You're not going in alone."

"No, stay  _put_ ," Brian hissed as he took off down the hallway. "Who the fuck would they be shooting at? We're the only fucking people in here."

"Could be a citizen."

"Shooting means panic," Brian elaborated irritably. "Panic means running, which means leaving. We caught a break on knowing their exit, and we're going to use it. Schmidt, lock down that sector of the building  _now_."

Posted not too far away from the room where the sculpture was, Brian had already made it to the hallway just outside the main room. He glanced around, seeing doors sliding shut around him and belatedly realizing that he was  _in_  the sector he'd asked Theodore to shut down. Fuck.

"Roosevelt," he whispered.

There was no reply.

There wasn't even the normal background hiss of the radio transmission.

But there was a faint hiss from behind him, and before Brian could turn around to investigate, unconsciousness was swamping him.

 

He awoke to a throbbing head and darkness. His head only took a few seconds to clear, and upon blinking a few dozen times his vision came into focus.

He was in a closet, propped up next to none other than…

Justin fucking Taylor.

Brian surged upward, hand going for his gun, but his hand came down on his empty holster—and a second later, Taylor had tackled him back down to the ground.

"What the fuck—"

"Shh!" Taylor hissed, slapping one hand down over Brian's mouth.

Brian let out a muffled shout and swung his now-free hand up, trying to swing a punch, but Taylor dodged it at the last second.

"Oppenheimer is out there, and if you don't stop making a racket, they're going to find us and kill us," he hissed. "Now shut the fuck  _up_."

Brian wasn't entirely sure he trusted what Taylor was saying, but he stopped struggling anyway.

Taylor took his hand away and, after a moment's hesitation, crawled off of him and crouched back into a corner of the closet—which was not a very large closet at all. It looked like a janitorial closet, and most of the floor space was occupied by a large mesh bag.

"And I'm just supposed to believe that you're not from Oppenheimer?" Brian whispered, pushing himself up.

His head swam a bit, but he swallowed and tried to focus on Taylor's face.

"If I was, I would have shot you by now, not just gassed you," Taylor replied obviously. "I saved your ass, you know. You could be grateful."

"Gassed me?"

Taylor held up a hand, pulling down the sleeve of his bodysuit. In the darkness, Brian couldn't see anything, but Taylor grabbed his hand and placed it on his wrist, and Brian could feel tubing running down Taylor's forearm. It ended with a little nozzle-like thing just at the base of his hand.

So that was where the nerve gas came from.

"Why the fuck did you gas me in the first place?" Brian demanded.

"I thought  _you_  were Oppenheimer," Taylor admitted, with what looked like a grin.

"Jesus Christ."

Brian glanced down at his watch. Only ten minutes ago, he'd been running into the hallway after hearing—

"Wait, so were they shooting at you?" Brian asked.

"Yeah, that was me. I had no idea they were going to be here, but it looks like they're also going for the Artol sculpture. My client is gonna be so pissed…"

"And why the fuck are we in the closet?"

"Well, I haven't been for years, but for you, I would venture that it has something to do with your government—"

"Don't be cute," Brian interrupted, scowling.

Taylor sighed. "We're in the closet because your people locked down this sector, and Oppenheimer's out there prowling the halls, looking for a way out. And me. And you'd be dead meat if they knew there was a Fed in here, too."

Fuck. Schmidt hadn't lifted the fucking lockdown?

Brian's finger went to his earwig, but it was still dead. And speaking of which…

"Why is it that whenever I'm around you, my fucking earwig shorts out?" he asked.

"It's the magnets," Taylor explained, sounding a bit sheepish even in his whisper. "I stick a few to the cameras, and it creates a field that makes most electronics go haywire."

"Oh, that's just perfect," Brian muttered.

"It's not my fault!" Taylor protested.

"Can't you make it go away?" Brian asked.

"I'd have to go and pick them off the cameras individually," Taylor said, shaking his head.

"Fucking perfect."

Not only was he stuck in lockdown with a thief and a very pissed-off faction of Oppenheimer, but he was also stuck with no means of communication. And Schmidt hadn't lifted the fucking lockdown, the fucktard. Fuck.

Brian glanced around the tiny closet, which didn't contain much more than a few brooms, a mesh bag filled with cloth of some sort, and a loose pile of what looked like old tags for art pieces that had moved on to other museums. No shelving units. No ventilation ducts. No chemicals.

And his head hurt.

"Look," Taylor said eventually. "We pretty much want to same thing here, right?"

"You behind bars for the rest of your natural life?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of getting out of here alive."

 _That might be a more pressing concern,_  Brian admitted to no one but the neurons in his brain.

"If you knew how to get out of here on your own, I'm assuming that you'd have done it already," Brian said, eying the dim outline of Taylor's body with justified suspicion. "Which means you need something  _I_  have to get out of here."

"What's to say that I haven't frisked it off of you already?" Taylor asked. "I got your gun, didn't I?"

Fuck. Taylor  _did_  have his gun, that fucker.

"Give it back, you little—"

Brian lunged, but his head was still spinning and he ended up knocking into the wall instead with a rather loud  _thump_.

They froze.

Minutes ticked by.

"You  _idiot_ ," Taylor eventually hissed.

"Me? This is all your fault! If you wouldn't have moved, your body would have absorbed the impact and made less noise," Brian shot back.

"You're not getting this gun until we're out of here," Taylor insisted.

"Oh, yeah? And how are we going to get out of here?"

Taylor hesitated. "The… Through the ceiling. It's that tiled stuff."

"Doesn't hold any weight," Brian said dismissively. "We'll fall right through."

"I know the schematics of this place—there's a good four feet between the walls on either side of us. It runs the length of the gallery and out of the sector your people shut down, and it's hollow. We can go walk between the walls, then go up and down again into a different gallery of the museum and be free."

Brian's eyes narrowed. "Why didn't you do that before?"

"Um." Taylor paused. "Well. The ceilings are really high."

"You're too short," Brian realized, a grin spreading across his face. "You're too short to reach the ceiling!"

"It's not like there's anything in here I could use to boost myself up," Taylor said sulkily. "I'd like to see  _you_  get into the ceiling by yourself."

Brian glanced up and, admittedly, the ceiling was just a bit too tall for him for get into, either. Damned high-ceilinged galleries.

"So, what, I'm going to boost you up and trust that you'll help me up afterward?" Brian asked, raising an eyebrow that he knew Taylor couldn't see.

"No, I'm going to boost you up," Taylor said, "and then you're going to help me up afterward."

"And why would I do that?"

"Because I have your gun."

"Right. And nothing says, 'Come and Kill Me, Oppenheimer' like giving away our position with gunfire."

"I have your FBI badge. You want Oppenheimer to get their hands on that?"

That made Brian shut up.

"It's not like there's a better option," Taylor said pointed out, sounding disgustingly smug.

Brian's mind raced. Taylor had his badge, and the kid was too smart to have stuck it anywhere that would be obvious during a pat-down. If he wanted it, he'd have to fight for it—and give the fact that (a) a fight would mean they'd make noise and alert Oppenheimer and (b) he was still too dizzy to guarantee he would win the fight, a fight wasn't the best of ideas. But if he and Taylor could get out of the lockdown zone… The magnets wouldn't extend that far. His earwig would come back on, and his team would come for him and arrest Taylor. He'd just have to make sure he kept Taylor subdued long enough for his team to get there.

"Fine," Brian muttered, at long last. "Up and over we go."

 

They inched their way down the little hallway without speaking, navigating around fallen insulation, wiring, plumbing, vents, support beams and cobwebs so massive, they took several minutes to wave down.

Then Brian's earwig came back on, piercing in the absolute silence.

"—AND BACKUP HAS ARRIVED, STAY WHERE YOU ARE."

Taylor whirled, grabbed, slammed, and pressed his body flush against Brian's.

"That would be my earwig," Brian said dryly.

"Oh."

"Brando?" Ted was demanding in a tinny little voice, which seemed unnecessarily loud in the perfect silence between the two walls. "Brando, do you read me? Did anyone else just hear Brando?"

"Brando?" Taylor asked, eyebrow raise audible.

Taylor was  _flush_  against him. For about three seconds, Brian thought he felt one huge fucking erection pressing against his thigh.

Nope.

Gun.

 _His_  gun, that absolute  _shit_.

Brian shoved Taylor off of him. "Hands to yourself, princess."

The quietest of laughs rang in his ears as he started forward again. He didn't like leading, but there wasn't enough space for Taylor to pass him. Anyway, Taylor still needed him to get out of these walls, so his safety should be mostly guaranteed.

Mostly.

Brian drew in a great big breath, for strength, and promptly inhaled a cobweb.

"Hlech!"

Taylor whirled, grabbed, slammed, and pressed his body flush against Brian's. Again.

This time, he was slightly sweaty and breathing harder. Brian's cock took notice.

He tried to spit the cobweb out into Taylor's face, but just ended up drooling a bit while making a gagging noise and eventually gave it up. After nobly swallowing the remains of the cobweb, he demanded to know if Taylor was always this tense.

"Sorry," Taylor said, letting go after a moment. "I just—I don't work well in teams. I think I told you that before."

"Well, quit slamming me into walls," Brian hissed, pushing Taylor off of him  _again_. "I'm already concussed—you're going to give me brain damage."

He could  _hear_ Taylor freeze.

"That's not funny," Taylor said after a long pause, his voice low.

Brian frowned.

"Are we getting out of here or not?" Taylor demanded.

Brian started walking again, willing his cock to just  _fall off already_  and reminding himself that he was going to have this little drama queen in cuffs by the time the night was out. Taylor would get what was coming to him soon enough.

 

When they came to the end of the hallway—about the same time that the backup team had positioned itself around the entrances to the locked-down sector of the gallery—it was an unspoken agreement that Brian would go up first again.

They were talking, now that Taylor had gotten over his little snit, and now that they were relatively certain they were out of the area where Oppenheimer was trapped. Ted was still occasionally demanding to know what the hell Brian was doing, but he was too busy coordinating the backup units to really pester him, and Brian was busy making conversation.

About nice, safe, neutral subjects.

Like sex.

"Five-man sex train," Brian said proudly. "I was on top."

"Nuh-uh," Taylor said, sounding oh-so-young and disbelieving.

"Last November. It was fucking hot."

"I've never—I mean, not with more than one person. At a time."

"It's worth trying. Here, brace yourself against the wall."

There was a pause.

"Right," Taylor said after a moment, apparently deciding to let the innuendo pass. "Go for it."

Brian hoisted himself up Taylor until he was crouching on the boy's—man's shoulders, and then allowed himself to stand up slowly.

"I met a guy last week who could suck his own dick," he said conversationally, gripping the stud in the wall for balance as he rose.

"Oh, please," Taylor said dismissively. "I know like four guys that can do that."

"But you've never been in an orgy."

"I've had personal trainers who were very… flexible."

Brian encountered the top of the wall, where it went from vertical to horizontal and became ceiling panel. "Right," he said, and hoisted himself all the way up, laying himself flat on the cross beams. He slung an arm down, reaching as far down as he could go, and felt Taylor grasp it a moment later. "Up we go, Sunshine."

Taylor was a little monkey, climbing right up Brian's arm in three firm grips—

He swore and one of his hands lost its grip, went reeling back, and he almost fell before Brian caught his arm and yanked him upright. Taylor's left hand latched on to the top of the wall.

"Careful," Brian said, letting amusement leak into his tone.

"Yeah," Taylor said, voice strained. "Thanks."

Brian wondered for a moment if he was hurt, then decided that he didn't care, other than that it would only make him easier to subdue once Brian got him out into the gallery.

He kicked the nearest foam ceiling panel, cracking it in half and sending it tumbling down the gallery below, and then angled himself down the opening.

The drop into the gallery was too far and he didn't land right, his left ankle exploding in pain. Brian swore loudly and fell against the wall, gritting his teeth against the pain, and just barely managed to stagger out of the way in time to dodge Taylor falling out of the ceiling moments later.

In his ear, the sounds of the backup crew successfully apprehending their first member of Oppenheimer made him feel a fierce surge of pride for his team, even through the pain.

One down. Three to go.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Taylor was muttering under his breath, and Brian opened his eyes, curious to see if Taylor had injured himself when he'd hit the ground as well.

But no, Taylor was clutching his right hand—the one that had slipped on Brian's arm—and attempting to massage it as it jerked frantically in a stiff, claw-like shape. This was something that hadn't happened tonight.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck…"

In his ear, the second member of Oppenheimer was confirmed to be down.

"What happened?" Brian asked. Conversation would encourage Taylor to stay, he told himself, and buy him time before he had to try to subdue Taylor with a fucked-up ankle and an aching head.

Taylor's head jerked up at Brian's words, and he clutched his hand to his stomach protectively. In the sudden light of the gallery, instead of the dimly lit closet and the pitch black of the walls, Taylor looked impossibly young, barely even legal.

"Brain damage," Taylor eventually said, eyes hunted.

Oh. Well, that explained the sudden strop from earlier.

 _No less than a thief deserves_ , the evil voice in Brian's head hissed, all dark and vengeful and pleased.

"How did it happen?" Brian found himself asking, instead.

Taylor blinked at him once, and his mouth twisted. "I was doing a drop that a little faggot like me couldn't handle. A drop that should have been left for the 'real men'."

And Brian wanted to ask about the story behind that because he felt a surge of  _kinship_ , but there were gunshots and the noise coming from his earwig suddenly sharpened into words, and he realized that the third Oppenheimer man had escaped.

"Fuck," he swore.

Taylor frowned, warily picking himself up off the ground but still clutching his spastic hand to his stomach. "What?"

"Oppenheimer. One got loose."

And no sooner did he say it than a man in a black catsuit came tearing around the corner, a gun clutched in his hand and trained directly in front of him. Directly at Brian. Brian, who had no gun, who was injured, with no one to defend him—

Then in one smooth move, Taylor drew Brian's gun from his suit and fired.

The man went down.

And Brian  _stared_.

Taylor was chalk white and looked like he might actually pass out, one hand still spazzing fantastically and the gun still clutched firmly in the other. He was going into shock. There would be no need to subdue him long enough for people to get here, Taylor would just stand there as he tried and failed to process until Brian's team came to lock him up.

The sound of footsteps pounding down a hallway suddenly became clear. They would find them in less than a minute.

But—

But…

"Taylor!" Brian barked.

Taylor jolted out of it, dropping the gun to the floor with a clatter. He glanced at Brian, eyes wide and terrified, face still deathly white, then he glanced at the hallway where half a dozen FBI agents were about to round the corner.

He turned and ran right past Brian, but as he passed he angled his arm at Brian's head, and Brian heard a hissing noise and knew the darkness was coming before he could finish his complaint.

"Oh, not a—"

 

The Artol statue that both Oppenheimer and Taylor had been after was moved to a high security vault immediately, just as a precaution.

Three days later it was gone.

 

Brian got home around one in the morning, having finally, finally,  _finally_ finished writing up the last of the documents from the Oppenheimer bust. He was tired enough that when Justin Taylor stepped out of the shadows, he didn't even jump.

He thought about his cell phone, set speed dial five to call Ted. He thought about his ankle, mostly healed from the injury it had suffered five days ago. He thought about the gun he had stashed in his bowl of condoms.

What he said was, "Tell me it was you who made off with that fucking statue on Tuesday."

Taylor's grin was all the answer he needed.

"I'd answer, but I hear you've got this plausible deniability thing, here in America," Taylor said, his grin wicked.

Brian rolled his eyes. "Oh, spare me. You're as American as they come, Taylor, if you ignore the whole felon bit."

"I… wasn't raised in America," Taylor allowed, after a moment.

"Where were you raised?" Brian asked.

"I was raised in Rivendell, with the elves," Taylor said seriously.

Brian raised an eyebrow.

"In a cupboard under the stairs?" Taylor suggested.

"What are you doing here?" Brian demanded, suddenly irritable.

"I thought you might like your ID back," Taylor said, stuffing his hands into his pockets—because he was wearing casual clothes again, not that fucking bodysuit—and shrugging. "I did mean to give it back to you, you know."

"Set it on the table."

Taylor smirked. "Come and find it."


	2. Part 2

**A Wanted Man  
Part 2**

Retrospectively, Brian panicked a little.

"You're legal, right?" he asked, because nowadays experienced did not necessarily mean legal.

"In many countries," Taylor replied. And, after a pause and a smirk, "Including America."

 _I fucked a criminal_  was a phrase that would not leave his head, no matter how hard he tried. His dick had committed treason. Brian had heard men wish for a detachable dick, and he wondered if maybe the government would consider just convicting his dick and not the body it was attached to—traitorous, treasonous dick that it was. Maybe he could disown it.

"I fucked my personal trainer when I was sixteen," Taylor said, completely unaware of Brian's world silently imploding. "He was my first. And the whole time, he was coaching me—like, 'five more thrusts, just five more, I know you can do it, now four more, you can make it, you can last, you're doing so great, Justin'."

Right. Justin. The thieving, blond, apparently-very-talkative-after-sex menace in his bed had a first name.

Justin.

"He gave me a high five afterward, and told me that he'd have a plan for improvement in the morning," Taylor finished with a laugh. "I went home in  _tears_ , little sop that I was."

"Well, his plan worked," Brian said, shoving his mental apocalypse  _I fucked a criminal_ off to the side for the moment. "You've got a mouth made for sucking cock."

"It's the least I could do, since you told everyone that you shot the guy from Oppenheimer."

Brian blinked, mental breakdown suddenly forgotten.

"What? How'd you know that?"

"Not important," Taylor said softly, kissing him gently. "But thank you."

 _Taylor in a league with Oppenheimer. Taylor double-crossing Oppenheimer. Taylor plotting with Oppenheimer to get Brian._

"You need to leave," Brian said, shoving Taylor away roughly.

Taylor stared at him in confusion, maybe even hurt. "What—"

"Leav-ing," Brian enunciated, giving Taylor a little kick for emphasis. "Exiting. Going."

"That's it? That's all your dick can take is a blowjob and fuck?" Taylor said incredulously. "I thought you were, like, twenty-five?"

"I don't do repeats," Brian said flatly.

"Who said anything about repeats? I haven't gotten to fuck you, yet."

Brian  _stared_. "Excuse me?"

Taylor looked at Brian as though he might be suffering from sudden onset of severe mental retardation. "Uh, yeah. Duh?"

Needless to say, the whole thing ended with Brian pulling the gun from the condom bowl to protect himself from being  _savagely raped_ and Taylor storming off in a huff.

 

"It seems we've got a new major player to add to the list, then," Marcus said grimly.

This being Melanie Marcus, Brian wasn't sure whether her fingers were twitching in excitement at the thought of having yet another person to grimly hate (Marcus liked to do just about everything grimly, except maybe fuck her secretary), or in fear of the paperwork that awaited her as a result of this new addition to the list of Most Wanted Thieves.

"I don't think he's based in America," Brian offered. "He's probably fucked off to the South of France, or Tibet or something."

Marcus considered this with a grim expression. "Perhaps. But he'll be back, I'm sure of it.

Brian waited, resisting the urge to drum his fingers.

"Have Lindsay pencil you in for next Monday, on your way out," Marcus said grimly, sitting back in her chair. "I have a feeling you'll have made some progress with the Oppenheimer men by then."

"With any luck," Brian agreed, now resisting the urge to vault out of the chair. He forced himself to stand slowly, and before he started for the door he paused to nod at Marcus.

Marcus nodded back. "You did a good job with this one, Kinney," she said grimly.

Brian nodded again and escorted himself out, doing his best to shove thoughts of Taylor's pale, round ass out of his mind. It was over. Taylor was gone, and it was over.

 

What Brian was not expecting was for Taylor to come  _back_.

"I ought to call for backup and have you in a jail cell by morning," Brian threatened, tightening his grip on Taylor's wrists, which were pinned to the wall against his head.

Taylor rolled his eyes in spite of his rather compromised position. "Can we skip the foreplay and get to the part where you fuck me? I've got a meeting in a few hours."

"Why are you in town in the first place?" Brian demanded, eyes narrowing.

"Plausible deniability," Taylor replied, raising a pointed eyebrow.

Brian scowled. "I told you I don't do repeats."

Taylor glanced around. "Well, it doesn't look like there's anyone else to do, at the moment, so you might as well just go ahead and do me. Promise I won't tell."

He pushed his hips against Brian's with such sudden conviction that Brian reflexively pushed back so that his body was flush against Taylor's, which was flush against the wall.

His treasonous dick perked up a little.

"I thought you had trust issues," Brian muttered resentfully.

"I have trust issues with people I'm working with," Taylor answered. "This definitely isn't working."

Brian decided that he liked a guy who could compartmentalize.

 

"Don't you live in  _France?_ " Brian demanded, when Taylor appeared again not two days later.

Taylor blinked. "No. Who told you that?"

"Your file lists two thefts in France," Brian said with a glare. "Don't tell me you've relocated here to D.C."

"It's complicated," Taylor replied, making a face.

"Well, why don't you toddle back off to France or whatever the fuck until you figure it out?" Brian suggested.

Taylor scrunched his nose and shook his head. "It's complicated."

Brian gritted his teeth. "I should have you arrested."

"A man after my own heart," Taylor said, pretending to swoon.

 

So he and Taylor were fucking. A lot.

Brian told himself that he was keeping an eye on Taylor, trying to figure out why he might be hanging around D.C. instead of raiding Europe's finest galleries for pretty pictures and such, or just trying to get more information about the kid—man—whatever—so they could build a better file on him. So that someone else would catch him, and Brian wouldn't ever have to look at him again.

Here was what Brian had learned so far:

1\. According to Taylor, Taylor was not setting up a new home base in D.C.

2\. Thief-y politics were, somehow, worse than regular politics. ("You'd think that it'd be easier, because at least none of us pretend to be really good people like they do in business or government, but noooooooo—no, no, no, no, no. It's worse. Trust me.")

3\. Taylor had been raised in wealth, and at some point there had been a father.

4\. Taylor was really good at appearing in those opportune moments when Brian was between the bed and the computer, at four in the morning, horny and lazy enough to pull some guy from a chat room to come over for a fuck. Taylor was so good at it, in fact, that Brian had done no less than four sweeps of his apartment for hidden cameras.

5\. Taylor had an ulterior motive.

Okay, so he had absolutely no evidence for the last one, but it was something that he just knew, in his gut. There was no way Taylor didn't have an ulterior motive for fucking a member for the FBI. It was either that or a brain tumor, and Brian was really banking on it being the ulterior motive, because he was borrowing the brain tumor explanation for himself.

What other explanation could there be for him regularly—more than once, more than twice, to the point where it was  _regular_ —fucking an internationally-hunted thief? It had to be a brain tumor. There was no other explanation, except perhaps some heretofore unknown STD that made your dick spontaneously commit treason.

Repeatedly.

It also was some kind of miracle that no one had yet discovered his… dear god, he was not going to use the word relationship— _meetings_ with Taylor.

 

"You look happier these days," Mikey said one day, out of the blue.

"New brand of condoms," Brian muttered.

He bought new locks for the windows of his apartment, and installed a deadbolt on the door.

 

6\. It turned out that Taylor knew how to get around deadbolts.

 

"Okay, deserted island—one person, one sex toy. Go."

Brian frowned. "Hugh Jackman, anal beads."

"Ngh, Hugh's too big. It'd be like fucking Arnold Schwarzenegger."

"Who would you bring?" Brian asked, poking Taylor in the side.

Taylor stared up at the ceiling thoughtfully. "Maybe… Ooo, James Marsters. And chains. So many, many chains."

"Who the hell is James Marsters?"

"Actor. Cheekbones to die for. Your turn, new island scenario."

Brian paused, taking a moment to consider the fact that he was playing ridiculous  _games_  with a wanted felon while lying in the afterglow of some truly spectacular sex, then decided not to think about it any longer. He did what he wanted to do, and didn't feel guilty about it.

"All right. One person you despise, and one object."

Taylor snickered and rolled onto his side, propping himself up on his elbow. "Well, that one's easy. My father, and a fork."

Brian burst out laughing.

 

7\. Handcuffs were not on Taylor's list of Favorite Bracelets to Wear in Bed. He was, however, under the insane assumption that they might be on  _Brian's_.

8\. Taylor liked to have dramatic storm-outs when Brian refused to let him dominate in any way. At all. Ever. Which, hello, he was an FBI agent, and also Brian fucking Kinney thank you very much, and he didn't bottom. In any way. At all. Ever.

 

"Is this why you're here?" Brian asked, when Taylor's hand had started doing its spaz thing during a handjob. It was the first time he'd seen it happen since that night in the gallery.

" _Fuck_ ," Taylor bit out, gripping at his spazzing hand with his non-spazzing one, his face screwed up in a way that made him look simultaneously pissed and like he might cry. "I'm sorry, fuck, just give me a moment."

"Does it hurt?" Brian asked.

For information purposes only.

"The nerves are just—they just misfire," Taylor said through gritted teeth. "And then the muscles start cramping and twisting in ways they aren't supposed to, and  _that_ hurts like a motherfuck."

"Isn't there anything you can do for it?" Brian asked—for information purposes only. "Some kind of physical therapy, drugs, something?"

Taylor shook his head. "I can't."

"You can't go to a doctor?" Brian demanded incredulously.

"It's complicated."

Brian sighed, gave his dick a longing look even though it had long wilted away from its previously erect state, and took Taylor's spazzing hand into his own hands to begin a gentle massage.

Taylor goggled.

Brian shrugged one shoulder carelessly. "This usually goes away after ten minutes or so, right? I want that handjob."

Taylor eyed him suspiciously for a long moment, but eventually nodded.

 

9\. Brian really hated the phrase, "It's complicated."

 

They'd been posted inside the Penni gallery in Baltimore for almost three hours before Honeycutt had had a sudden flash of inspired thought and realized that the message they'd intercepted had actually been meant for The Cairo, a gallery all the way across town.

"Hazelhurst, front entrance, Roosevelt on the back, Fiddler and Red I want you on the other sides of the building. I'll be on the roof. Shoot to disable but don't be afraid to kill, because these guys aren't afraid to kill you. No one goes in until backup arrives. Silence on the frequency unless you've got something critical to say."

Accordingly, no one answered him. Brian went for the rusting metal ladder that led to the roof, and heard the sounds of footsteps as his team moved into position.

The Cairo was dark, as far as Brian could tell, and there were no obvious noises from people inside from the roof. The building itself was a one-story building, free-standing, and only had windows in the front. It was made of cinderblocks, which was huge as far as advantages went. Brick would have been too easy to bust through if Oppenheimer wanted to try to make a new exit, but cinderblocks were another story.

Brian positioned himself in a corner of the roof, the one nearest the ventilation unit that rose up out of the building, and had just gotten settled when he heard the sound of a gunshot ringing inside the building, a loud slam, and then repeated banging that sounded like someone crawling furiously through a duct.

"Check-in," Brian whispered, his gun leveled and his heart pounding.

"Roosevelt."

"Red."

"Hazelhurst."

"Fiddler."

Brian breathed a little easier, assured that the situation was still contained to the building. Backup couldn't be more than a few minutes away.

Then Taylor burst up onto the roof.

"Freeze, FBI!" Brian barked automatically even as his brain was registering the familiar blond head.

Taylor froze, eyes wide, only half-hauled out of the wrecked ventilation system. "Oppenheimer. They're coming up on me, get out of the way."

"Get up out of there," Brian ordered, keeping the gun trained on him with one hand and reaching out with the other.

Taylor gripped his outstretched hand and pulled himself up, but just before he got his footing Brian twisted the arm and forced him down to his knees, keeping the arm at an awkward angle as he pushed the gun against Taylor's neck.

"Justin Taylor, you're under arrest," he gritted out.

"You  _fucker_ —"

Brian went on, ignoring the cacophony of voices in his ear that were demanding to know what was going on. "You have the right to remain silent. Go for that gassing thing and I will blow your fucking head off."

"I'm not with Oppenheimer, you gigantic asshole," Taylor spat, twisting furiously. "My father's sent them after me!Let me go!"

Banging started echoing from the ventilation system that Taylor had just emerged from.

"They're coming," Taylor hissed. "Let me go, they're the ones you want."

Brian scrambled for his handcuffs with the hand that was holding the gun, which was awkward but doable.

"Red and Fiddler, I want you up on the roof  _now_ ," he snapped as quietly as possible, slapping one of the cuffs onto Taylor and then going for the second—

A man burst out of the ventilation system, his gun leading the way, and Brian barely thought before he abandoned Taylor and shot.

Taylor twisted free and took off.

The man with the gun screamed and lost whatever footing he'd had, falling back down the shaft.

And their cover had been blown.

"Man the exits!" Brian screamed. He turned around to go after Taylor, but the little shit was too far across the roof already and he had more important things to worry about. "Stay where you are, be ready to shoot! One is down, Taylor has escaped!"

By the time backup had arrived, Taylor had gotten away, they'd shot another Oppenheimer member, and the last one remained trapped inside the building.

All Brian kept hearing was  _My father's sent them after me_.

At least, until he learned that a very valuable jade figurine had gone missing from the gallery, and hadn't been recovered on any of the Oppenheimer men.

 

"Do you have absolutely no survival instincts?" Brian demanded from his bed, where he was lying naked and half-asleep when Taylor showed up in his apartment a week later.

"We don't mix work and pleasure," Taylor reminded him with a shrug. "I'm safe."

"Pleasure?" Brian repeated.

"Yeah," Taylor said, nodding. "I mean, I'm sure you're in all sorts of denial, but we've been regularly fucking almost two months now. We have a  _relationship_ , Brian."

Brian's eyes narrowed. "A relationship? I tried to arrest you.  _Twice._ "

Taylor nodded.

"I would think a relationship would require honesty," Brian pointed out, switching tactics as a new idea occurred to him.

"I've never lied to you."

"You might have mentioned that your father was Craig Lyons, the premier cat burglar gone data thief," Brian said sharply.

The blood drained out of Taylor's face. "Wh—how do you know that?"

Brian's smile was shark-like. "Oppenheimer talked. Apparently, you're no longer Daddy's favorite little cat burglar. He doesn't want you keeping with the family business. In fact, he's been sabotaging your drops for months, now, hasn't he? Oppenheimer's just the latest tactic."

"This isn't pleasure," Taylor nearly whispered, through bloodless lips.

"It's a part of our relationship," Brian said, smirking. "After all, as my  _partner_ , I love you. I want to know everything there is to know about you."

Taylor blinked at him, eyes shining. "I—Brian, I…"

Despite himself, Taylor's utterly destroyed look tugged at his heartstrings.

"Look," Brian said, gentling his tone, "your father obviously just wants you to pick a better career than being a thief. Listen to him. You don't need to make yourself a felon before you're even twenty-two, that's no way to start a life."

"My father doesn't think I'm  _good_   _enough_ ," Taylor spat, his hands suddenly fists. "He doesn't want what's best for me, he just thinks that little faggots like me shouldn't be doing a man's job. He left me to die when I fell and bashed my head open on a drop last year!"

The brain damage.

Brian's stomach twisted, but he ignored it.

"What are you doing in D.C.?" he demanded. "I thought you weren't trying to set up a home base here."

"What do you care?" Taylor shot back.

"I want you to give up being a thief. Get a fake identity, find a legal job, settle down somewhere and leave it all behind," Brian said.

Taylor stared at him, aghast. "No! I was raised from birth to be a thief. It's what I'm  _good_  at. I love every minute of it, from the planning to the executing to watching the news afterward to see how pissed off the local cops are. It's who my father made me, and it's who I am."

"Is that really who you want to be? The person your father made you into?"

"I'm good at it."

"That doesn't answer the question."

"You just want me to stop so that you can fuck me without feeling guilty," Taylor challenged, scowling.

"I don't feel guilty about fucking you," Brian insisted. "I don't  _do_  guilt."

"Don't you?" Taylor asked.

"No," Brian said flatly.

"Bullshit."

"What are you doing here in D.C.? You're obviously not out of range of your father's influence."

"You think it's easy to just start over? You think I can just go  _buy_  a fake identity?"

Brian blinked. "Uh, yeah? I got my first fake ID when I was fourteen."

Taylor waved an impatient hand. "Not an ID, an identity. I don't need to get into clubs and drink, I need things like a credit score, a social security card, health insurance—there's a limited number of people who can do that, and my father's got them all under firm instruction not to work with me. And he's been sabotaging my drops, so I'm getting a bad reputation with clients."

So that was why Taylor's hand was so fucked up—he couldn't get health insurance. Lyons must have left him to bleed out and cut him off immediately after.

"So. Why D.C.?" Brian pressed.

"I had a job here—the one where you first met me—and I thought I might have a few contacts here, people my father overlooked, and then of course there was last week's job, which took a few weeks to plan out—"

"You were planning that for  _weeks?_ " Brian said incredulously. He'd never even suspected, there hadn't been the slightest indication that Taylor was doing anything but fucking around…

Of course Taylor hadn't said anything. Duh. They related on two different planes, and him planning to steal a jade statuette was definitely more on the thief/FBI agent plane, rather than the fucker/fuckee plane. But—but fuck, it was his job to know these things! How had he let a known felon plan a crime, and get away with it, for weeks?

His job was to do everything possible to stop crime.

He'd failed.

"—don't know how you knew it was that night anyway—"

"This ends now," Brian said, cutting him across.

Taylor blinked. "What?"

"This. Us. Relationship, whatever, it ends right now. Get out of here."

Taylor rolled his eyes. "Seriously, Brian, I—"

Brian seized the gun from the condom bowl and leveled it at Taylor. "I'm not fucking around here. I'm giving you five seconds to leave, or I'll blow your fucking head off and tell everyone that you were creeping in here at night, I was caught off guard and acted on impulse."

"I'm telling you the truth here!" Taylor said furiously. "I just told you—I just told you  _everything_  and you're going to wave a gun in my face?"

"No," Brian answered. "I'm not waving it around. I'm pointing it directly at you."

"Brian, this isn't fun—"

Brian fired a warning shot, jerking it up so that it would sail just over Taylor's head.

"Get. Out."

Taylor, who had gone into a side-roll at the gunshot, stared at him silently. He was breathing hard, his hands curling and uncurling into fists, and Brian couldn't pick out the emotion in his eyes. Betrayal, perhaps.

Then he turned and walked away, and didn't slam the door on the way out.

 

"Taylor was in my apartment last night," Brian announced the following morning, as he accepted the cup of coffee that Schmidt offered.

Four pairs of startled eyes snapped onto him.

"Right," Brian said, taking a swig of the coffee. "I fired a shot, missed, and he left. I have no idea what he wanted. But for whatever reason, he was there."

"That's really weird," Gold said. "Isn't it?"

Brian nodded. "Yeah. Really weird. I don't know what he wanted, but I've put a patrol on my building in case he comes back."

"You can come stay with Mikey and I, if you're nervous about being home," Honeycutt offered.

"Uh. I'm good, thanks," Brian said, remembering purple and red walls, a kitchen that was essentially a stockpiling of the chips and cereal aisle of a grocery store, and a couch that had never really had the cum cleaned out of it.

Anyway, he wasn't going to hide from Taylor. Taylor was nothing more than a scared child running away from his daddy.

"I want my flag on Taylor," Brian ordered, turning to Schmidt. "Anything that might be related to Taylor crosses my desk. Make it happen."

Schmidt nodded. "As you wish, your maj—"

Brian held up a hand, gritting his teeth. "Do  _not_  start with me this morning, Schmidt. I was up half the fucking night explaining why I'd fired my gun to the cops, and I haven't finished a proper cup of coffee yet."

Schmidt gulped, nodded, and scurried off to his computer.

 

Taylor didn't come back.

 

"You run out of those new condoms?" Mikey asked one day.

Brian blinked. "What?"

Mikey shrugged. "You said you found a new brand of condoms you really liked, it had you in a really good mood. You've been grouchy lately. Did you run out or something?"

"Uh. Yeah, I did. Waiting for the new shipment to come in," Brian said vaguely, ignoring the odd pang in his chest.

He left the windows open, that night.

 

"Schmidt, I thought I told you to put a flag on Taylor for me?" Brian demanded, after almost a month had passed.

Schmidt looked up from his computer. "I did."

"Why the hell haven't I heard anything, then?"

Schmidt frowned at him. "Probably because he hasn't done anything recently, Brian."

"You're sure?" Brian asked.

"Yep."

Brian frowned, and tried not to think of what that might mean.

 

"It's been six weeks since we last heard anything of Taylor," Marcus said grimly.

Brian nodded.

Marcus' eyes narrowed. "And you've gotten absolutely as far as you could with the Oppenheimer men we caught?"

Brian nodded again. "Yeah. We haven't seen any activity from Oppenheimer in America since that last bust, either. We heard a few rumblings over in Spain, but they were retrospective rumblings, and never confirmed anyway."

Marcus exhaled heavily and brought a hand up to her face. "Dammit. What about Taylor's father, Lyons?"

"Nothing," Brian said, shaking his head. "He's moved completely to data retrieval, no field work necessary, so I've been coordinating with Cyber Crimes. They've been scratching their head over Lyons for years. Adding a son to the mix doesn't change much."

"Dammit," Marcus said again. After a few moments, she looked up at Brian. "Do you have any suggestions at all?"

After a slight hesitation, Brian answered. "I think we might just let Taylor drop for now. There are other cases going, and it seems like Taylor's not too much of a danger."

"Not too much of a danger, huh?" Marcus said grimly. "I see you're forgetting about the fact that he got by us three times, when we knew about his drops days, if not weeks, in advance. Furthermore, the only reason we were there at all was because of tips we got on Oppenheimer. We've never once heard anything about Taylor. I'd say he's serious danger, Kinney."

"What do you want to do, go to war with him? Until we get a tip, there isn't anything more we can do," Brian replied, trying and failing to fight down on his ire.

"I'm not going to let Taylor fall into our box of cases everyone says they're still working on, but have actually just given up on until some kind of big break arrives in the mail from the CIA," Marcus said, eying him narrowly.

Brian scowled.

"Did you think I wouldn't notice the  _clearly labeled box_  downstairs?" Marcus asked, raising an eyebrow.

Now Brian winced.

"I won't let Taylor fall into that pile," Marcus said grimly. "And you're going to be the one to keep it active, Kinney."

"Right," Brian said, gritting his teeth. "Will do."

 

Taylor came back.

He appeared just as Brian was getting out of his car after getting home from work, almost two months since he'd disappeared, looking a little more worn than he had before but otherwise all right. Brian stared at him for a long while, halfway out of the car, then eventually shook his head and stood, slamming the car door behind him. He put his hand inside his jacket, to where his gun would be if he'd known that he'd be running into Taylor tonight.

"I knew you'd be back."

"Really? After you almost shot me?  _I_  wasn't sure I'd be back."

"You're pathetic like that."

Taylor's eyes narrowed for once tense moment, while Brian's breath didn't come, but then his face relaxed into a grin. "Yeah, I guess so."

Brian shifted his weight to the other foot.

"Are you going to shoot me this time?" Taylor asked, raising an eyebrow. "Arrest me, maybe?"

"Lucky for you, being pathetic isn't a crime."

Taylor grinned a little. "Neither is being a total asshole, but I still feel like smacking you upside the head for it."

Brian suppressed a wince. "Yeah, well, after you execute a robbery right under my nose, I feel like I'm inclined to be a little irrationally pissed."

"It's my job," Taylor said flatly.

"To lie to me?" Brian asked.

Taylor didn't answer, but his gaze was steady.

Brian hesitated, then took his hand out of his jacket and gestured. "Come upstairs?"

A genuine smile lit up Taylor's entire face. "I thought you'd never ask."

 

"So, I see you've been surviving," Brian said casually, as he ushered Taylor into his apartment.

"Everything's intact, except maybe my dignity. My father hasn't been making it easy for me to find clients."

Brian's eyebrows shot up. "If you're looking for sympathy, I'm gonna have to give you a big flat 'no' on that front. Try another button."

Taylor exhaled. "I get that."

"Fucking well right, you do."

Leaning against the wall, Taylor stared and Brian met his gaze evenly.

A minute passed.

"I'm not going to apologize for trying to arrest you, or for shooting at you," Brian said flatly.

"And I'm not going to apologize for doing my job," Taylor replied, crossing his arms.

Another minute passed.

"I'm willing to offer you an out, though," Taylor added at last.

Brian snorted. "You're going to offer  _me_  an out? What, I let you fuck me and you return all the little goodies you've stolen in the last year?"

"Don't be an asshole," Taylor said evenly.

"Why shouldn't I be?" Brian asked. "Do you deserve any better? You think you can just come  _waltzing_  in here and start making deals?"

"Don't."

Brian folded his arms over his chest and inhaled. "Fine. Impress me."

Taylor lifted a hand with three fingers sticking up in the air. "I solemnly swear," he said softly, "that I will never again break the laws of the United States of America, or conspire to help others break the laws of the United States of America. All of my business in this country will be legal and reputable."

Brian wasn't sure whether to let his jaw fall to the floor, or to burst out laughing.

"This I swear," Taylor went on, absolutely serious, "until I am released from my promise by Agent Brian A. Kinney."

Brian blinked.

"And that's what you'll get, if you agree to help me out," Taylor announced brightly, dropping his hand and bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Sound good?"

"I'm supposed to take you at your word?" Brian asked dubiously.

Taylor nodded. "Yep."

"Yeah, that's not gonna happen. Try again."

"I like you," Taylor said.

Brian was thrown. "What?"

"I like you," Taylor repeated. "And I want you to keep fucking me. And it isn't fair of me to ask you to ignore your job and commit treason just to do that—and it isn't fair for you to ask me to stop doing what I love, either. Therefore, the solution is for me to stop doing drops in the U.S."

"What makes you think I want to keep fucking you?" Brian asked, though actually, it sounded kind of like a nice idea.

"Even if you don't, I've got incentive for you," Taylor said, after a barely-noticeable pause.

Brian raised an eyebrow.

"I'll give you my father," Taylor said.

"Your father," Brian repeated blankly. "You're going to  _give_  me Craig Lyons."

"Give might be a little strong choice of word," Taylor admitted, making a face. "But I'll give you all the information I have, and I'll work with you in his capture, if you'd like. Pro bono."

Brian blinked at him for a moment, processing, then slowly made his way over to the couch. He sat down heavily.

"You're going to give me your father," Brian said again, perhaps a little less blankly. "Because… what, because that frees you up to be a thief again?"

"Also, he's a bastard," Taylor offered. "He left me to die and fucked up my hand for the rest of my life. I'd love to see him rotting in an Italian prison for the rest of his life."

"But it allows you to become a full-fledged thief," Brian countered.

"But not in America."

"So you say."

Taylor shrugged one shoulder. "So I say," he agreed, moving over to take a seat next to Brian on the couch. He positioned himself cross-legged, facing Brian with an earnest expression on his face. "I promise I'm telling the truth. Most big jobs are over in Europe, anyway. No one likes American art; it's messy and contrived, and frankly, entirely too politically-motivated."

"Aren't you a little art snob?" Brian said amusedly, unable to help the small grin that poked its way onto his face.

Taylor returned with a full-fledged grin of his own. "When I was ten, my mother took me to the Louvre. I've been planning my break-in ever since."

"Okay, that right there? That's the kind of thing you can't tell me."

"I was kidding," Taylor said, rolling his eyes. "Mostly."

Brian elbowed him. "Shut up. So we get your father, and everything's hunky-dory for you? Won't there be weird betraying-your-own-kind thief politics for you afterward?"

"Why, are you concerned about me?" Taylor asked, raising an eyebrow and giving him a devilish grin. "Do you  _care_ about me? Do you  _love_ me?"

"No," Brian said, giving him a dark look and an elbow to the stomach. "I just want to make sure that you won't have any last-minute changes of heart or anything."

Taylor raised three fingers again, looking like a perfect little Boy Scout imposter. "I solemnly swear, no changes of heart."

Brian blew out a breath and sat back into the couch, staring straight ahead.

Taylor's hand wandered onto Brian's thigh and started drawing lazy circles. Brian snatched it up and forcibly shoved it back so that Taylor's elbow collided with his stomach with an "Umph," from Taylor.

"Do you have any idea how difficult it would be to clear this with Marcus? She's got it in for your guts," Brian said, head practically spinning as he thought of how  _that_  conversation was going to go. Would hypothetically go.

"I'm stealing pretty pictures," Taylor said. "My father's stealing dossiers, identities, schematics for military compounds. Which of us do you want to stop?"

"You can really give us enough information about your father to capture him?" Brian asked, raising an eyebrow.

Taylor nodded. "And if I can't, I'll do my absolute best to make sure you do get it."

Brian glanced over and took in Taylor's dead-set determined face. There was suddenly no doubt in his mind that Taylor would do absolutely anything to put his father behind bars—the kid was angry, had good reasons for wanting his father out of the picture, and was stubborn and persistent enough to get the job done.

The fact that Taylor was back here after Brian had almost  _shot_ him spoke volumes of either his bravery or his stupidity, but either way Brian found it incredibly interesting.

"You realize that if anyone finds out we've been having sex, we'll both be fucked?" Brian asked.

"My lips are sealed," Taylor promised, zipping his mouth shut even as it smiled gently.

Brian inhaled, casting his eyes forward again.

Taylor's hand crept onto his thigh again, but Brian didn't push him away. Didn't push him away when he leaned closer, when his hands wandered over more than just Brian's thigh, when his lips grazed against Brian's neck.

"Help me put my father in jail, and I'll never steal anything from America again," Taylor whispered into his ear. "Promise me you'll try to make it work."

Brian's lungs seized, and he reached up and caught Taylor's hand in his own. He squeezed tightly.

"Do you promise?" Taylor asked.

Brian yanked the hand forward and captured Taylor's mouth in his own, sealing the deal without words.


End file.
